January 2013 Media Thread

Ken Liu's "Single-Bit Error" was an interesting reply to Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God".

Connie Willis wrote several SF works around the theme of historians in 21st century Oxford travelling back in time as part of their studies. The short story Fire Watch is online and serves as a good introduction. If you like it a lot, you should probably try reading To Say Nothing of the Dog or Doomsday Book.

A great short story called On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning by Haruki Murakami. It's only 3 pages long and really touching, especially for those of us unsuccessfully dabbling in romance.

Michael Vasser - Darwinian Method - Interview with Adam Ford is pretty damm excellent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Dcj7O3XEU&feature=youtube_gdata

Rest of Adam Ford's uploads seem very interesting too!

Departing Space Station Commander Provides Tour of Orbital Laboratory.

In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The tour includes scenes of each of the station's modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost.

Tempo. From the group that made the short video Plot Device, Tempo is about some scientists who make a gun that can temporally accelerate/decelerate objects with the flick of a switch. The plot is pretty B-movie and obvious, but it feels like this could be a Valve game on the level of Portal. The acting's pretty good, too.

Http://intonarumoron.wordpress.com

I've collected music videos since the mid 1980s. Electronic and experimental and strange, mostly. Being able to link to or download videos instead of dub them on videotape has nearly filled a TB drive and inspired my blog. Rather than list a few recent favorites, see above for years of favorites. I post weekly, my fellow intonarumorons irregularly.

Following Eliezer's quasi-recommendation, I began reading "Prince of the Dark Kingdom"; 6 or 7 days later, I stumbled out having caught up on all 1.14M words.

I'm not entirely sure why I like it; the author's spelling, for example, hasn't improved over 5 years which is pretty irritating. I think what I like about it is that:

1. Voldemort seems like a much more developed and interesting character than pretty much anywhere else except MoR (much more so than the depicted version of Wizarding England which is basically a better-functioning sort of Nazi England).
2. the plot is totally different but at the same thing often very similar (I found how it pulled the Chamber of Secrets plotline very interesting)

In descending order (reviews on Goodreads):

• Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity
• Hoffer, The True Believer
• Huxley, The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell
• Montfort, 10 Print Chr$(205.5+rnd(1)); Goto 10
• Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
• Good, Good Thinking: The Foundations of Probability and Its Applications

I just read Ben Franklin's autobiography, aided by textcelerator (made by jimrandomh). I had only read bits and pieces before, and the whole is worthwhile. He was a definite precursor of the LW sort of rationality, and to read in his own words the epistemic and instrumental techniques he employed, and well as the virtues he sought after, is a delight. It was written over two centuries ago, and English has changed since then, but not unrecognizably.

Some non-fiction books I really liked recently that might interest Lesswrong:

• Ubersleep: Nap-Based Sleep Schedules and the Polyphasic Lifestyle

• Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It

• The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution

"The Beginning and the End: The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective" by Clément Vidal. Technically this is just a "PhD thesis preprint" but it's over 350 pages long. A sprawling manuscript in which the author devises a meaning-of-life philosophy based on systems theory, the conquest of the universe by superintelligence, and other ingredients. The discussions of physics and cosmology are unduly dominated by certain "alternative" theories and could have benefited by orthodox criticism, and no doubt much of the rest should be read skeptically too, but overall, this is worth knowing about, if you're into transhuman cosmo-ethics.

I hadn't read Les Miserables in a long time, and I really enjoyed rereading it. There's so much more to learn about a lot of the characters (a bit of Fantine's courtship with the man who abandoned her, Marius's turn toward revolution, a page and a half digression on cannon design during the assault on the barricade). Plus, this description of Javert:

He, Javert personified justice, light, and truth, in their celestial function as destroyers of evil. He was surrounded and supported by infinite depths of authority, reason, precedent, legal conscience, the vengeance of the law, all the stars in the firmament; he protected order, he hurled forth the thunder of the law, he avenged society, he lent aid to the absolute; he stood erect in a halo of glory; there was in his victory a reminder of defiance and of combat; standing haughty resplendent he displayed in full glory the superhuman beastliness of a ferocious archangel; the fearful shadow of the deed which he was accomplishing, making visible in his clenched fist the uncertain flashes of the social sword; happy and indignant, he had set his heel on crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, and hell, he was radiant, exterminating, smiling; there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous St. Michael.

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 is perhaps the Great Latin American Novel of our generation. It's a sprawling unity of five distinct sub-novels, each revolving around different characters but with some intersections between them. One part, for example, follows the lives of several European literary theorists devoted to the study of a reclusive German writer invented by Bolaño, while a different part, coming much later, is a biography of that writer. Despite the fact that the plots of these sub-novels weave through many places and times - Europe, the US, Hitler's Germany, Soviet Russia - they are all connected in one way or another to a fictional Mexican city of Santa Teresa, lying close to the border with the US, itself modelled closely on the real Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. Santa Teresa, as Ciudad Juarez in real life, has seen something like an epidemic of feminine rapes/murders over the last 20 years, which may or may not have been the work of unknown serial killer(s). Much of 2666 is devoted to painstaking description of many of these murders, their victims, and the ineptitude and corruption of local police. Those parts are not easy reading, but neither are they suffering porn.

This is a brilliant book, wide-ranging, psychologically precise, often funny, at times painful to read. If you're mainly reading for hedons, you would probably not like it. My mind has been enriched through reading it, and I highly recommend it.

I just powered through the first five books of the Temeraire series; if you like proper British gentlemen, the Napoleonic wars, civil rights struggles, and also dragons, they are pretty great.

Part of the back of my mind thinks of Temeraire as a budding FAI; incredibly powerful, and with a fairly different set of preferences from most of society, and ends up making some big changes as a result. He doesn't undergo self-enhancement and spiral out of control but there's a very strong Sense That More is Possible, and the struggle to do the right thing as the Only Sane Man is basically the whole plot.

In descending order (reviews on Goodreads):

• Brin, Existence
• Kipling's Kim
• Musa Pedestris

The Sherlock BBC series, set in modern London, turns an astounding number of... let's go with "brainy types" into raving fans, but I'm not actually sure why. There's nothing particularly rationalist about it, they're standard detective stories with Sherlock making impossibly precise deductions. The mysteries are fiendishly clever, though; the writers come up with plots that are still surprising if you're familiar with the tropes and the particular stories they parallel.

Characterization is probably the biggest appeal. Holmes is a high-functioning sociopath (his words) and an insufferable self-centered brat (not his words) who slowly defrosts over the series; his love for showing off makes exposition very palatable. Watson is competent, and he knows it; he's solid under stress, a quick thinker, and an excellent marksman; he admires Holmes, but he doesn't hesitate to stand up for himself (a poor choice of words, since he's lame at the beginning of the series). The relationship between the two is a big focus of the series, with Watson learning to deflate Holmes's melodrama and becoming used to his putting-human-eyes-in-the-microwave antics, Holmes learning nonzero social skills and a scrap of concern for others, and way too many gay jokes. Moriarty is... not like you'd expect.

I love the way Sherlock's thoughts are shown, and the editing of the whole thing, but then again I fall over myself squeeing "The Musketeers of Pig Alley uses follow focus YOU GUYS" so take it with a grain of salt.

Overall the show is not subtle ("He's a storyteller! GET IT? GET IT?"), but the acting is (Martin Freeman has an expressive forehead. How does one have an expressive forehead?), and so are some of the references to the original stories. The jokes are funny without taking over the story, though if you're prone to vicarious embarrassment some might hurt a bit. Cumberbatch and Freeman rather cute, if you're into that, as is Pulver in the second season if you're into that.

Be wary of the fandom; it produces excellent fiction and art, but the characters are badly distorted in them, much more prone to express themselves through angsty confessions than through banter about Chinese food.

Everybody Loves Raymond Season 4, Ep.22 "Bad Moon Rising." Available on Netflix's Watch Instantly.

Sitcom episode that brilliantly explores the relationship between reflective irrationality and empathy when a wife is exceptionally irritable because of PMS.

The Korean drama Coffee Prince. I was shocked at how self-aware the characters mostly all are, how reasonable and sympathetic their emotional dilemmas are, and was especially impressed at how well each side of an emotional dilemma communicates with the other. It's seventeen hours long, and has a feel-good atmosphere. Romance is the main theme.

Touhou (reverse chronological order):

• "夜ごとの闇の奥底で" [inst. rock] (by UNDEADCORPORATION; from 紅染の鬼が哭く {C82})
• "からくれなゐ" [inst. rock] (by UNDEADCORPORATION; from 紅染の鬼が哭く {C82})
• "Transparent" [electro] (by Maurits "ZEN" Cornelis; from Starlight Prelude {C82})
• "Satellite" [trance] (by Mano/＜echo＞PROJECT + Tim Vegas; from Starlight Prelude {C82})
• "六十年目の東方裁判" [Inst. Rock] (by 彩音 ～xi-on～; from 東方志奏 12th Spell -Trick Shooter- {C82})
• "感情の摩天楼" [Inst. Rock] (by 彩音 ～xi-on～; from 東方志奏 12th Spell -Trick Shooter- {C82})
• "Up to you" (by C-CLAYS; from Prism {C82})
• "Overwhelm" [Orch.] (by Melodic Taste; from Melodic Battle {C82})
• "Beauties of Nature" (by はちみつれもん; from Lost World {C82})
• "綾倉盟 - 虹とひまわり" (by CROW'SCLAW; from アコースティック・エピソード)
• "Powered by Maxwell's Demon" (by WAVE; from Symphonic Rhapsody "Peony")
• "Angels, Monsters, The Secret Lyrics" (by Foreground Eclipse; from Tears Will Become Melodies Tonight)

Vocaloid:

• "She is Falling Down And I Am All Alone" [ambient] (Miku; by 古川本舗 × Go-qualia; from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Lost There)
• "Poem of a Thousand Years" (SeeU; by 상록수)
• "Itoshi no Megane" (Len; by にュウ; heard on MADE IN AKBN)
• "a ray of light" (Luka/Miku; by Ryuuuu)
• V-box (Miku/Rin/piano; album by Marasys)
• "Echo" (Len; by NataP; heard on Forest)
• "Filozofio" (Luka; by ミナツキトーカ)
• "Dark to Light" (Luka; by OneRoom)

What music do people listen to while they're working?

Not a videogame per se, but still a potential timesink for some of us. I like it anyway.

Space Engine is a free space simulation software that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, starting from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by human astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets!

So, a space simulator. Allows FTL travel to get between universes. No interesting creatures like Noctis had, but it is very pretty sometimes.

Edit: Also prone to crashing. Such is life.

Game theory with translucent players.

Anime/manga:

• Oyasumi Punpun scanlations have continued updating: the series is becoming ever more harrowing and difficult to read as it nears the end. I'm glad I started but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
• Milkman manga: weird and sometimes hilarious.
• Thermae Romae anime: even weirder and more amusing, and the 3 episodes means that it doesn't outwear its welcome before the gimmick gets old.
• Upotte!! anime: I enjoyed the battles and found the gun nut parts mildly interesting, but the sexualizing and fanservice with a weak finishing episode mean I can't recommend it.
• Humanity Has Declined anime: lovely artwork, hilarious end to the first episode, and it's continuing to hold my interest up to episode 6; we'll see how the rest goes.
• Joshiraku anime: a disappointment, and I say this as a Sayonara fan.

Duolingo, Gamified online language learning.

Dilbert on AI x-risk.

I've been playing the Uncharted series for PS3 to help me learn Spanish. So far, it seems ideal for this purpose. The speaking is very clear, the (foreign language) subtitles reflect what is actually being said (almost always), and the gameplay and story are quite good (imagine Indiana Jones, but with a lot more parkour). There are also many other language options besides Spanish (including French and Portuguese).

Note: My PSN ID is 'Thomas_Bayes'.

Anyone heard of brainscale? It's got Dual N Back, mental math, and some other games that are supposed to help with memory.

In progress manga: Uchuu Kyoudai, a story for grown-ups about becoming an astronaut. Also neat because nearly all the characters are intelligent (and even act like it!), and that's treated as normal and fun.

Thank you for making and maintaining these, I've found quite a bit of interesting material through these threads.

Please note that per last month's poll (although it was close) three new threads were added this month, the Fanfiction thread, the Online videos thread, and the Short Online Texts thread. In full disclosure, I have a slight preference for not having these be threads, since it means I have to look up three more thread names and make three more comments, so I'll reconsider whether or not to keep making these based on use and feedback.